2026-08-31 · Birdia Blog

What Is "Scooping" in Chipping and Why Do I Hit the Ball Twice?

What's really going on

When you scoop, your hands get mentally ahead of your head: you want to "help" the ball into the air, so the lead wrist breaks down (flips) just before impact. The result is that the club arrives on its upswing with the face pointing at the sky. The loft of the wedge lifts the ball on its own; when you try to lift it, you catch the leading edge.

The double hit shows up when the leading edge or the sole bounces off the ground or the ball, and the clubhead — moving slowly and with no clear direction — touches it again on its path. It's the signature of scooping combined with deceleration: loose hands, a clubhead that skids.

Stan Utley describes it bluntly: in the short game the wrists hold their angle and the chest leads the motion; the flip destroys that angle. Dave Pelz hammers the same point from the other side: contact must be descending, with the low point of the arc ahead of the ball.

The number to keep in your head

Dave Pelz, measuring thousands of rounds for Short Game Bible, found that around 60–65% of all shots happen inside 100 yards. In other words: where you lose the most strokes is exactly where scooping does the most damage. That's why it's worth fixing before your driver.

The correct mechanics are easy to remember: weight forward, handle forward, hit down. Harvey Penick taught it with his image of letting the club do the work instead of "scooping." When the handle points at your forward hip at impact, the effective loft drops a touch and contact becomes clean and repeatable.

In Birdia, when you analyze your chip on video from your phone, the app detects the wrist flip and the handle position at impact — the two telltale marks of scooping. Seeing on screen that your handle arrives lagging behind is usually the click you need to stop trying to lift the ball.

How to fix it

1. Set up with weight forward. Put most of your weight on your lead foot and leave it there through the whole shot. Weight hanging back feeds the scoop.

2. Handle ahead of the ball. The shaft should lean slightly toward the target. Keep that lean at impact.

3. Hit the ground after the ball. The divot (or the brush) starts where the ball was or just after it, never before.

4. Accelerate smoothly through. Deceleration is scooping's first cousin; if you quit, the wrist compensates by flipping.

A drill from Utley: make small swings feeling like the logo on your shirt points at the ball at impact. If the chest arrives, the hands don't have to "rescue" anything.

In Birdia you can record ten chips in a row and see whether your low point stabilizes ahead of the ball shot after shot: consistency is the proof that the flip is gone.

Fuentes

• Dave Pelz — Short Game Bible.
• Stan Utley — The Art of the Short Game.
• Harvey Penick — Little Red Book.

Frequently asked questions

Is scooping the same as hitting it fat?

No, but they usually travel together. Scooping is the cause (trying to lift the ball with your wrists) and the fat shot is one of its consequences: with the club arriving on the upswing and the weight back, the sole hits the ground before the ball. It also produces thin shots and the dreaded double hit. Fixing the scoop usually fixes all three.

Should I lock my wrists completely in the chip?

Not entirely, but you should hold their angle. Utley teaches that the wrists hinge naturally on the backswing and keep that angle at impact, without flipping. The mistake isn't using your wrists — it's breaking them down backward to "scoop." Think firm wrists and a turning chest, not rigid, locked wrists.

Does a double hit count as a penalty?

Yes, though since 2019 it no longer adds an extra stroke: under the Rules of Golf, an accidental double contact counts as a single stroke. It used to be penalized; now it isn't. But it's still a symptom of a technical problem — scooping and deceleration — that's costing you distance and control, so it's worth fixing regardless.